It was a deep and dark December in a small Indian town called
Dehradun, close to the Ganges and far away from any major city.
A smiling, crying bundle of joy arrived to her proud parents. They
rejoiced at the first child that they had been blessed with. They
counted the fingers and the toes of the plump, healthy baby and
were full of gratitude. They promised to take good care of this
perfect creation. They didn’t know then that some promises
made are impossible to keep. The next decades would try them and
the baby in every way possible. This is the story of that child.
I was born a Brahmin (footnote 1) girl in a typically vegetarian,
nondrinking, non-smoking, non-violent, and extremely religious extended
family of farmers. My dad nicknamed me ‘Beta’, which
translates to ‘son’. It was his way of feeling he had
a son, when he really only had two daughters. He hardly ever called
me by my real name, and he never realized that that word made me
more of a man than any other experience in my life. My identity
crisis started then.
I was gifted with The Ugly Duckling storybook when I was seven,
and it only added to my confusion. I went about my entire life thinking
that that was me. I did sometimes believe that the ugly duckling
would one day grow into a beautiful swan, but that idea was usually
forgotten amidst the many challenges life presented. The addition
of braces to my protruding teeth at age twelve only intensified
these feelings.
My dad, who had chosen to be an officer in the Indian Army and
move away from his farming future, had suffered when he was forced
to change his habits entirely and live the typical Armed Forces
lifestyle. As part of his training, he had to learn to subsist on
things like quail, partridges, and sometimes snakes. As children,
my sister and I grew up eating practically everything, so that a
day should not come when we would have to suffer and be forced to
adjust our diets. So the Brahmin girls went about life eating mutton
do pyaza and chicken biryani and relishing the partridge pickle
and other delicacies unheard of in our farmer uncles’ lives.
Westernized to the hilt, never thinking about the Brahmanism that
I was born into, I moved on, happy with whatever I saw and enjoying
it all. During summer holidays when all the cousins would meet at
our grandparents’ house, I developed an unusual feeling of
superiority over them.
They ate only vegetables and did not know that gin, which I had
once accidentally imbibed from my dad’s glass at lunch, looked
just like water but tasted like fire. They said ‘yuck’
when we spoke about how mouthwateringly delicious chicken tandoori
was.
I enjoyed their obvious discomfort when I showed off with tales
of touching fish in the fish market or watching the blood spill
from a chicken’s freshly split throat. As we grew, they still
didn’t know any basic knowledge, like that beer makes an excellent
conditioner for hair that was limp and had no body. My superiority
complex crept in without anyone knowing any better.
I would fight the boys in the officers’ mess while other
girls my age acted shy and coy when the boys were around. I was
always one of the guys and often spoke and sat and behaved like
them. The boys saw me as a buddy, too, as I didn’t do all
those girly things. I was always part of the gang, which was good
for me, but there were times when they were on the receiving end
of my antics.
One incident occurred at a formal farewell dinner for an outgoing
officer of the regiment. All the children were expected to stay
out of sight in a room far away from the main hall where the adults
partied on. It was after eleven o’ clock, and all the kids
were sleepy but no one would be the first to admit feeling tired.
It was an unannounced competition.
At that point, my sister, who was about seven, called out to me
and said she was really sleepy and wanted to lie down. The older
boys, about nine and closer to my own age, snickered and called
her names. My anger burst forth like a volcano erupting, and I dived
onto the main culprit. Before I realized what was going on, all
the other boys came to protect their gang leader and jumped on me
and punched me hard. I was enraged at the injustice, but at the
same time I didn’t know how to pull out of the pile or what
to do next; I was shocked by their unexpected ganging up against
me.
In the confusion of hands and feet, between being pushed down and
trying to stand up, I reached for what seemed to be a fleshy arm
and bit firmly into the skin. I tightened the grip of my teeth until
I felt moisture on my lips. A loud howl from the gang leader silenced
the entire party, and soon the parents rushed in and pulled apart
this melee of children.
The gang leader was rushed to the army nursing room, and I got
the worst talking to from my mom, who admonished me to behave like
a girl. I was surprisingly collected after that release of anger.
I must have looked like a Halloween partier with drops of the boy’s
blood still beaded on the corners of my lips, but I responded to
my mom very calmly that it just was not a manly thing for me to
allow an outsider to tease my sister. Besides, only I had the right
to torture her. The intensity with which I spoke silenced my mom
as she realized that I really meant it. She was horrified, and later
when she narrated this incident to anyone she always added, ‘Why
can’t she be like the younger one, my angel?’
My dad stayed out of this even though he was present at the scene,
as it was considered appropriate for mothers to handle such situations.
As I lay in bed that night, my dad came and tucked the mosquito
net neatly around me and whispered, ‘Well done, Son. I am
so proud. That was very brave of you. Don’t let anyone ever
treat you or your loved ones badly.’
That became my defining moment. All my life thereafter I have often
dived into stuff like that and stood by the weaker party, being
brave for them and never caring about the consequences. Of course
I learnt that bleeding someone was not the best way to make a point.
What’s wrong is wrong. The sooner this is cleared, the lesser
the pain for all involved.
Often a mother and a father go about parenting each in their own
unique manner and don’t come to a joint agreement as to how
they should raise their off spring. It was like that with my parents.
They both went about it in their individual way, and neither conferred
with the other. It led to a lot of confusion within me, as often
I did not know which way to go. It is important to instil core values
into kids at an early age, which my parents did very well. They
imparted honesty, integrity, industriousness, determination, focus,
humour, and intelligence to me and my sister early on. Despite their
best intentions towards me, their first born, they got it wrong
in the most important area by not communicating with each other.
Maybe instilling clarity into their kid didn’t occur to them,
or perhaps they didn’t have that within them in the first
place.
My identity was sealed when I bit the bully. I would be both boy
and girl; I had to go on fluctuating between those two depending
on the situation, I thought to myself. Was I not half the cells
from my mom and half from my dad anyway? Biology came to my rescue.
That incident was the last time those boys spoke up in my presence.
I was the uncrowned champion with all the girls and all the boys
too, except for the bandaged gang leader. Soon after, his dad was
transferred, and thankfully my bad reputation was washed away.
My sister saw me as a support through that fiasco, and whenever
she was in trouble or needed advice she would come to me for an
opinion; even now she continues to do that. Often my solution was
to take over the matter by personally going to the person who she
had a problem with and saying whatever had to be said as if she
was saying it. This was no real solution at all, and I did not realize
that I was becoming a bully now. After that the problem would go
away and in fact the person causing the problem would never come
close to either her or me. Nobody knew any better at home.
As a fee for all this free emotional protection, my sister received
regular hammerings from me if she didn’t comply in certain
situations. She isn’t joking when she says she is short because
I never allowed her to grow. I would just keep banging her back
into the earth at regular intervals. Physical fights amongst us
were not so frequent, but there were some real lessons that I learnt
through play.
One such time we were left at home while mom went out to replenish
the weekly groceries. I was the mistress of the house, and my sister
was to play the part of the housemaid. In this role she had to clean
the kitchen and the toilets and keep the food ready in time for
the master to return home. She did all her assigned tasks rather
quickly and came to me, the mistress. ‘Ma’am, pardon
me for disturbing your siesta, but all the work is done. When will
the master come home for lunch?’ ‘Later,’ I said,
‘and since all the chores are done and you have nothing else
to do until the master returns, I would like you to massage my tired
feet for a while.’
The ‘housemaid’ became aggressive and rude and said
that that was not part of her job. Like any good mistress, I was
outrage and would not stand such rebellion from the help. I told
her to get out of the house and never come back. She started crying
and apologized. After expelling my sister, I returned to the imaginary
world of the privileged mistress and continued to rest her tired
feet.
Everything was alright for the next hour or so until the real mistress,
my mom, returned from the weekly shopping trip only to find her
little daughter locked out of the house and crying like a lost orphan.
My sister related the housemaid’s sad tale, and I never played
the mistress again after that. I graduated to playing a lot of ‘doctor-doctor’
in my teenage years though. When I was married and managed a home
of my own, I was always careful to be friendly, rather than superior,
to all my domestic help.
My mom had settled that once and for all by making me the housemaid
and giving two days of leave to the paid helpers. My sister floated
about the house in joy while I was made to clear and wash her plates
and dishes, polish her shoes, and iron her school uniform as a final
reinforcement to ensure the demon mistress never returned.
At that time not only did I have an identity crisis, but my bullying
became worse, as now I would do it without my mom’s knowledge.
I became a bit of a liar, too. The person who has suffered the most
because of my identity crisis, besides me, has been my sister.
Despite being so thin as to appear almost malnourished those days,
I believed I was strong, and that often made me do things that others
would have turned their head from and politely declined to participate
in. Confident of winning, I went wherever the action was. My inner
strength carried me through a lot of unpleasant situations in life.
Often I was expected to respond differently in situations as compared
to my sister. It made me feel superior, and along with this dad
would whisper to me that I was the son and could easily do it.
For example, all the banking was assigned to me at an early age
while he was away on a posting to a border area. Not only did I
withdraw and deposit money, but mom asked me to perform the more
complex task of budgeting for the entire household. Her relationship
with money was bad, or so my father revealed in one of the secret
confidences he shared with me.
While kids my age were being responsible for taking the trash out
or feeding the family cat, I was adding up all the expenses and
setting aside money for the daily expenditures until the next payday.
That’s when I developed a love for numbers. I became very
adept at juggling things and could find solutions to the seemingly
impossible. As a child I had the advantage of not being bound by
the limitations that adults feel as they often turn down the most
obvious solutions.
Although this ability benefited me later in life, it put a lot
of pressure on my less than fourteen-year-old mind. While I suffered
and was confused in other areas, I was very confident and had perfect
clarity when it came to money. Since my friends could not understand
my thought process, I was often the outcast for knowing too much.
The identity crisis deepened further. Was I a carefree child or
a financial wiz?
That parents can harm their own flesh and blood without even realizing
it, and then further compound their mistakes by not discussing them
with one another, is a lesson I have learnt well and been careful
not to inflict on my own child. Young people cannot be expected
to take over adult roles just because parents are weak or incompetent
in some areas. The terrible money handling on part of my mom placed
a huge burden on me. It has helped me later but was a big weight
to carry those days. My great responsibilities made me a serious
person when I should have been free to be a child, making the normal
mistakes that children make and learning from them.
This inappropriate financial responsibility has defined a large
part of me. Many things I do have to be completed perfectly, leaving
no room for error, and no room for much else either. Spontaneity
was totally missing from my life, and only recently have I reclaimed
it.
Around age fourteen, I could no longer pretend to be a son, so
I developed a kind of convenient split where I would be the Beta
when my dad was around and play the ‘swan’, which I
was now beginning to enjoy, when he wasn’t. That was the beginning
of a long and dangerous ride.
My mom tried in vain to make a girl of me. My sister was the delicate
one and I was the wild one. To please my mother I took to knitting
and cooking, and I even became very good at stitching clothes. I
was the perfect son to dad and the almost perfect daughter to my
mom, who was impossible to please. My sister was always the perfect
daughter and continues to be.
Mom was just trying to get all the chores done, since dad was away
often. She never reinforced tenderness and love with her children.
Discipline and good manners were her theme. Any physical display
of affection was rare.
I saw my friends being hugged and kissed frequently by their parents,
and it seemed strange to me that people would do that so often to
each other and for apparently no reason at all. It wasn’t
even their birthday, I marvelled when I was younger; it wasn’t
as if they had performed exceptionally well at school or at a sport,
I reasoned when older. I was unable to understand why other families
made such a big deal of it.
While spending a day at a girlfriend’s house, I watched her
rush out of the room to hug and greet her dad when he returned from
work. When I asked her why she had just done that, she replied that
she always did when he came home. Always? Every day? I wondered.
When I asked mom why we didn’t hug every day, she had no answer
and neither did that motivate her to consider becoming more expressive.
I found getting myself more and more confused, as we just did not
express our feelings so openly despite obviously loving each other.
We were really good at expressing our anger or sharing our feelings
or thoughts, minus the physical hugs and kisses and the actual words
‘I love you’. Everything else was discussed. Nothing
negative was ever kept hidden, waiting to surface at some inopportune
moment. There was never any negativity left to deal with later.
Everything was handled swiftly and immediately. We got really good
at releasing all our feelings. A part of me enjoyed this process
of releasing as any boy would. Sometimes our love was expressed
through anger, too. It seems odd, but in our family we knew that
this anger was an expression of love and not real animosity.
Between ages fourteen and sixteen, all was well with me. Suddenly
I was the swan. I knew it and capitalized on it big time. The dating
started, and I went out with a continuous string of boys, many wilder
than me. After all the years I plagued my mom, it was now my boyfriends’
turn to deal with me and unsuccessfully try to make a girl out of
me.
They had a tough time. I was too much of a guy, but they figured
that out only later. What they expected and were used to was a typical
Indian girlfriend, soft-spoken, pretty, delicate, demure, blushing,
coy, giggling perhaps, and ditzy. She would cry easily, and then
it was up to the boyfriend to patch things up and buy her gifts
and chocolates or roses. I was extremely deceptive in this area.
I certainly looked the part during the first two dates.
I was extremely adept at shifting gears between the boy - girl
personas by now. But by and large the masculine aspect surfaced
at the third date, and the unsuspecting boyfriend would be rather
amused at my occasional swearing. From meeting number four onwards,
my boyishness would dominate, and I’d remain a complete tomboy
until the end of the relationship.
Sometimes I would let out a string of words that would make the
boys blush for me. When they said something out of line I would
smack them on their arms or back. As our familiarity grew, I graduated
to slapping them on the face. They were too shocked to react. I
once hit one of them where it hurts the most, and he doubled up
on the floor in pain and squeaked out what sounded like nasty words.
Even today I have no idea what they were, as he wasn’t at
his eloquent best then. He wouldn’t repeat them to me when
I told him later that I didn’t quite catch what he said while
he was curled up on the floor; perhaps he was afraid of a repeat
treatment. He had to wheel his motorbike home, as he wasn’t
able to sit very well. His rather tight jeans didn’t help
either. We broke up soon after.
Word spread. Many such instances made me hot property amongst all
the boys between sixteen, my own age, and twenty-one. My reputation
grew, and each wanted to try his luck, confident that he would emerge
the champion. Taming of the shrew could have been their theme. No
one ever won with me. I would always come out on top. Winning was
in me. Whether it was love or war, I didn’t differentiate.
Very rarely I would let one of them feel good by letting the fight
end in a good round of animal sex. Indirectly, he would think he
had won that round. It only happened when I liked that one particularly
more than anyone else.
Extremely critical of whom I was seeing and always warning us of
the possible consequences, mom became the enemy. I learnt to block
her out completely. I could handle myself.
I decided I was going to take charge of my life as soon as possible.
Studying doubly hard and determined to move away from the family
as soon as possible I graduated in commerce and obtained a hotel
management diploma at the same time. Additionally, I studied German
just in case I got a job as a translator and got an opportunity
to move to Germany, which was one of the places I had always wanted
to visit when I grew up. My choice of language also gravitated towards
the more guttural and manly one as compared to the delicate French
that most of my peers opted for in college.
Finally, and it couldn’t have been soon enough for me, I
started out in Bombay. A job with a leading hotel helped me finance
my stay in this city of dreams.
Still going about life as either a boy or a girl depending on the
situation I was in, I found Bombay accepted me in no time at all.
I felt that the city had been waiting for me to come and discover
it.
I smoked now and drank and led a pretty active social life, hitting
all the night spots and living the life of a twenty-something. To
be seen as someone who was game for anything and with very little
inhibitions and no parents around made it that much easier. There
was a lot to see, and I learned the ropes quickly.
I realized later I attracted men in my life who were extremely
expressive with their emotions, because that was what I never got
when I was younger and what I deeply craved. The identity crisis
and its deeper questions were never really answered at all. After
a while I got heavily involved with dating, which resulted in a
quick marriage to a colleague who was many years older. That made
him a good choice for the wild and reckless me. I had barely known
him for six months before I agreed to the marriage. He had proposed
within a month of my joining this leading publication house. I never
did pursue the hotel job. In retrospect, it was my not knowing what
I really wanted that made me vulnerable to his insistence to get
married and live in a home of our own in Bombay instead of boarding
in a working women’s hostel.
He won only because I didn’t know my mind and heart or even
myself; I figured that if someone was so crazy about me, how could
he possibly be an unsuitable partner. My outer confidence made people
believe that I really was sure of myself, but inside I was just
a lost and wide-eyed mix of boy-girl.
After that, I was really caught up with my home, child, and career.
The question of identity now revolved around my roles as wife, mother,
successful manager, or youngest chairperson of the housing complex
where we lived.
I purchased a house against strong opposition from my husband,
who thought it wasn’t a good idea to look for financing from
a bank. I went into it alone, and at some point he was convinced
that owning was better than paying rent. I could be stubborn about
things I really wanted. I made most of the difficult, and usually
male, decisions the entire time I was married, even the decision
to get divorced.
During my nine years of marriage, I still did not know who I was.
I was a bit of everything I was expected to be, and on my own I
was nothing. I defined myself based on who I was with and never
thought of who I was when I was alone.
At that time it didn’t matter, because I had not been alone
for long periods of time. Everything was just happening to me, as
opposed to my being responsible for creating anything at all. Life
was a series of accidents back then, many good ones and some nasty
ones. No single situation ever had me worried for long periods of
time.
It got to a point where I was looking to find quick solutions to
every challenge, to keep all parties happy. I always had all the
answers and often thought that life was just a big game to be played
and won, always easily excelling. And I did.
I never questioned until I was hit with thunder and lightning from
the skies and was stripped of all the layers of conditioning wrapped
around me. The cocoon within which I had become so comfortable was
forcibly peeled off, and I was exposed to the strongest sunlight
and blinded. All I could do was grope around.
This was when my identity was finally challenged and threatened.
I was already confused, and there was more and more being dumped
on me. As the stark reality hit me, I was forced to choose to continue
to live with my husband, whom I was told was cheating on me even
though he was the one who had chased me to get married to him nine
years ago, or to opt out of the marriage and live alone with my
son. Armed with the information I was given, I gave my husband the
ultimatum to choose the other person or me, and to my shock he chose
to move out.
This was a blessing in disguise, as he didn’t try to fight
for the custody of my son, my only anchor and reason to go on. We
spent our last night under the same roof on 1 May 2000.
I was now totally alone in Bombay with no dad to fall back on,
no husband, and no savings. The life of a single parent of a five-year-old,
lost in the sea of people and the fast pace of life in Bombay, would
challenge anyone, especially someone who still had no idea of her
very identity. I thought I was sinking, being pulled down and thrashed
about by the shark from Jaws. How could it be? I could not lose.
I always had been the winner.
I turned to mom, who came to my rescue in a flash. She took over
my daily troubles of managing my less than five year old son and
the house at a time when I could not even get myself to get into
the shower each morning.
There was nothing to look forward to now. Mom could not help in
any other way. All she could tell me was to pray. I could never
relate to her, and as usual whatever she said fell on deaf ears.
My confidence was completely shattered. I was dead on the inside
and would have very well jumped into a well or from the top of a
tall tower, as my life had very little purpose then.
The only thing that prevented me was the thought of leaving my
son alone in this world alone for no fault of his own. That was
my only thread to sanity, and even then it kept me sane for brief
periods only. Later I learnt to utilize both the masculine and feminine
sides of myself to give this boy both the parents rolled into one.
This was the one way my split identity actually worked well for
me, I think.
I turned to my sister too. She stood by me like a rock and offered
unconditional emotional and financial assistance. She was the silent
strength behind me. But all her support and all the love she showered
on me and her nephew could not help me to understand who I was -
the basic thing I needed to know before I could move to the next
set of life questions I wanted to solve.
My sincere search for my identity began then, at age thirty and
alone. In the nine years since, I think I have found the answer.
I did what I have always done when in doubt, jump in a la Superman.
Choosing to go ahead with the divorce, I started life afresh with
my son and thought I would handle the identity issue later on, when
I had the luxury of time.
I tricked myself into believing things would magically fall into
place if only I could find that key that would open all the doors
and locate the right door that would give me a happily ever after
life. I changed my name twice to get the right vibrations to achieve
that.
In numerology I discovered instant success and a sense of everything
falling in place, only to later realize that while it gave in some
areas, it took away in some other very critical areas. The name
change hadn’t been done correctly the first time around, and
I learnt this the hard way.
It became a joke when I announced to my colleagues one Monday morning
that I had changed my name over the weekend and was to be addressed
by the new name. They thought it was a silly prank. No one believed
me. To get them to take me seriously, I had to stop answering to
the earlier name and only respond when people addressed me by my
new name.
They all wanted to know what had brought this about. I had bumped
into this young man who was visiting my house along with a feng
shui consultant. While I was busy getting the directions sorted
out with the consultant, this youthful numerologist sat in my living
room and worked on my name.
He asked me for my date of birth and went about doing some quick
calculations. He explained that numerology is the science of getting
the name aligned to the date of birth to ensure that they are in
harmony. It’s all about the vibrations that we send out, and
if the vibrations of our name are not in sync with our date of birth,
things keep going wrong in our lives despite our best efforts. That
is what was happening to me, he explained.
What were the chances I would not buy that? The numerologist suggested
a change in the spelling of my existing name. I didn’t like
that option of double ‘k’s and ‘t’s, so
I went about picking a new name. My identity crisis made me gladly
accept this as the solution to all my so far unsuccessful attempts
to find my real self. I would take on a new avatar and fool the
old identity with this new me. He suggested this perfect name numerologically,
and I went along with it.
Two years later, it turned out that the number he had so confidently
recommended was faulty. First, there were the unending procedures
that I had gone through to legally change my name. Then followed
the troubles that the faulty name number landed me in.
Getting deeper into the mess, I realized that I would have to take
the matter in my own hands, and I began to study numerology. With
little trust of anyone else, I decided to get the right calculations.
My previous love for numbers came right to my rescue. I explored
numerology until I had educated myself in both the Western and the
Indian methods.
I changed my name for the second time. This time it was like magic.
Absolutely perfect. Things fell in place into my giant jigsaw puzzle
with ease, but something was still missing. A strange feeling of
incompleteness came over me. Slowly the reality hit that it’s
more than just adding up to the right number. It’s not the
vibrations you put out but the vibrations you have within that matter.
I saw Shakespeare’s quote ‘What’s in a name?’
in a different light now. He was a wise soul. ‘What’s
in your name?’ he would have asked me for sure. If only this
rose knew that it was the smell that defined me and not my name,
I would not have gone and worked on that earlier. As I said, I was
not clear then or for a long time later on.
Without any idea or a sense of knowing what I was looking for,
I intensified the search and went round and round until I felt I
was chasing my own tail. I figured that there are five senses, so
if it is not the sound of the name, then perhaps it is in the smell
that one puts out. Perhaps I was sending out a smell of fear or
loneliness? And if not that, then we are left with touching. All
I touched turned to gold easily. Seeing was next, and I did see
it all when I travelled from one county to another. Finally it rested
on the tasting. Success tasted sweet but just ever so briefly. One
by one I realized that the answer was not in any of these senses.
The search and comparisons had just started. After two name changes,
a divorce that took two long years to finalize, and a son sent away
to boarding school, I moved to Dubai. The roads there challenged
me to break all the speed limits as I zipped about the lanes with
the roof of my car pulled down and my hair blowing in the hot desert
breeze. My music threatened to deafen the seemingly soundproofed
city. Dubai was heaven.
I drove the car of my dreams, successfully managed a career that
got me a double promotion and double the salary in record time,
and then brought my son back to his home —a happy home now.
I travelled the world and started living my life in a city that
fulfils dreams. With each step up the ladder of success came the
saddening realization that it was not enough, and l was still searching
for the elusive answer to the defining question.
We do a lot of things which we think are the right things at the
time. Later I realized that I was trying to be someone else. The
name change just happened to be one of those things I used to become
another person. All along it was my inside self that was calling
out to be looked at, while I kept looking outside.
Despite having it all only seven years after I lost it all, I still
felt something was amiss. Maybe I was looking in the wrong places.
I wondered if those who guided me to act in these directions knew
any better themselves. If they did would they have pointed me there?
If I had had a better grounding into myself right from childhood,
I would have known better than to seek their advice. Having never
received formal religious grounding, I was helplessly floating around
and had nothing to anchor into. I was drifting. I was lost. Only
I could save myself, and I had no clue where I was supposed to start.
I had read somewhere that we are all born complete and spend our
entire lives in search for this elusive thing that we think we lack,
while all along it lies within us. What is this thing that I lack,
I wondered.
I reviewed my entire life in reverse order trying to understand
where things had gone wrong. I lacked for nothing materially. In
fact I had always had it all, and easily. I gave up looking backwards
in time. Ironically, it was in the regressing that I finally made
some progress many years later.
Then I went through my entire life, starting at the beginning to
understand when things first started going wrong. I gave this up
even faster. It is the conditioning around us which makes us believe
and operate from the feeling that we lack something.
Then we start looking for that thing which we think we lack, and
the comparison and the search begins.
Lost, confused, and tired, I gave up trying to understand. I thought
that if I could just get through each day, one by one, soon enough
the responsibilities would be over and then I could really look
for the answer.
I’d had my plate full of stuff for so long that I had to
call for a side plate to pile aside some of the things to be chewed
upon later. By the simple process of elimination I had finally figured
what wouldn’t work for me. I didn’t know if it would
work later, but I had a fair sense that it would not work right
then, and so that would get dumped onto the side plate.
But there is so much in the universe, and I could not possibly
sample everything and every experience in life. I kept piling my
side plate with stuff to be handled later. It became precariously
full and overloaded and things started spilling onto the table especially
my emotions. I was becoming cold and had started to deep freeze
my feelings as much as I could. Now the freezer was full too.
It hit me that the answer had to be found right away. I could not
wait another day, and certainly not until the right moment came
along. Is there such a thing as the right moment anyway?
They say when the disciple is ready the master appears, and just
like that as I was flipping through a children’s magazine,
it happened. As I waited at the dentist’s for my son, I read
the story that changed me forever.
The story was about a lion cub raised by sheep. When the cub wandered
away from the herd, he was captured by an old lion. The old lion
was surprised that the cub was not able to roar and chase smaller
creatures like other cubs his age enjoyed doing, but behaved and
made sounds like sheep. The old lion took this cub to the lake and
made him see his reflection in the still waters. When the cub saw
who he really was, he let out the loudest roar ever heard from any
lion cub. He had suppressed his true personality because of the
conditioning he had received from the herd. He could now move around
the rest of his life freely and be happy with his identity as a
lion.
That hour in the dentist’s reception propelled me to finding
my true self. I knew then that I was holding onto the end of a thread
that would unravel the more important higher truths to me. My being
would be defined now. Whatever happens I should not let go of this
awareness, I decided.
It is social conditioning that makes us behave differently from
our true nature when we are forced to be sheep and follow the herd.
The true lion lies within, and it is up to us to awaken the sleeping
lion and lead the way. Nature is perfect in whatever it does. There
is no room for error as far as nature is concerned. It is we humans
who like to complicate things and believe that what we are creating
is a correction to nature’s errors. If we were meant to be
clones, we would have all been born the same naturally. Some of
us are meant to be different, and we are born as such. If we have
the courage to recognize the lion within, then lions we all shall
be.
Look at your reflection in the mirror, and see what you have believed
about yourself because others conditioned you in that way.
Being a lion requires you to move alone often, to find your path
and to be prepared to face the uneven territory that is part of
life. By being the lions that we are meant to be, we learn the true
lessons of life.
The lion goes for the kill. But his killing for food is an integral
part of the cycle that nature intended. Lions have the power to
protect themselves and their cubs in times of danger. Sheep may
offer protection in crowds for a short time, but if faced with danger
they will all cuddle and huddle away, leaving one of them alone
in the face of danger.
We come alone and go alone, and that is the undeniable truth of
life. Why should we be afraid to find our way alone between the
coming and the going? We come from nothing and go into nothing,
so why is being nothing in between not OK?
I now understand a few things better than I did in that moment
three years ago. It is the sense of inner knowing and inner being
that defines us, not the five senses of sound, touch, sight, taste
and smell. I know now what I would like to be and where I would
like to go. The journey has started and I know I’ll get there.
I am still to figure out how to get there, but that is something
to be figured out just as all lions have to figure it out, by being
in the wild.
The most important question of them all is one that got answered
for me recently —the question of who I am. The lion within
says, ‘I am the lighthouse that sends out beams in all directions
and shows the way to others who may be on the same search of trying
to understand their being just as I have been.’ You can join
me in this search of finding your inner lion and roar and purr as
may fit the occasion. |